ng for a
time the national objects of their trust out of their hands; and then a
cry would be industriously raised against the House of Commons, as
depriving British subjects of their legal privileges. The restraint,
being plain and simple, must be easily understood by those who would be
brought with great difficulty to comprehend the intricate detail of
matters of fact which rendered this suspension of the administration of
India absolutely necessary on motives of justice, of policy, of public
honor, and public safety.

The House of Commons had not been able to devise a method by which the
redress of grievances could be effected through the authors of those
grievances; nor could they imagine how corruptions could be purified by
the corrupters and the corrupted; nor do we now conceive how any
reformation can proceed from the known abettors and supporters of the
persons who have been guilty of the misdemeanors which Parliament has
reprobated, and who for their own ill purposes have given countenance to
a false and delusive state of the Company's affairs, fabricated to
mislead Parliament and to impose upon the nation.[67]

Your Commons feel, with a just resentment, the inadequate estimate which
your ministers have formed of the importance of this great concern.
They call on us to act upon the principles of those who have not
inquired into the subject, and to condemn those who with the most
laudable diligence have examined and scrutinized every part of it. The
deliberations of Parliament have been broken; the season of the year is
unfavorable; many of us are new members, who must be wholly unacquainted
with the subject, which lies remote from the ordinary course of general
information.

We are cautioned against an infringement of the Constitution; and it is
impossible to know what the secret advisers of the crown, who have
driven out the late ministers for their conduct in Parliament, and have
dissolved the late Parliament for a pretended attack upon prerogative,
will consider as such an infringement. We are not furnished with a rule,
the observance of which can make us safe from the resentment of the
crown, even by an implicit obedience to the dictates of the ministers
who have advised that speech; we know not how soon those ministers may
be disavowed, and how soon the members of this House, for our very
agreement with them, may be considered as objects of his Majesty's
displeasure. Until by his Majesty's goodness and